Mission to Nepal: Firefighters deploy to quake

April 26, 2015 - Members of the Los Angeles County Fire Department are heading to Nepal to assist in the rescue and recovery effort following a massive 7.8-magnitude earthquake.

California Task Force 2 is one of only two such teams in the U.S. available for foreign disaster missions. Each member of the team has a specific area of expertise, from doctors to confined spaces and collapse exerts to structural engineering specialists to dog handlers, Sprewell said. Their assistance comes at the request for international help from the government of Nepal.

There are similar teams in other countries, but only two in the U.S.; and the other team, out of Fairfax County, Virginia, has already deployed to Nepal. Past deployments of the Los Angeles County task force nclude Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Haiti earthquake in 2010, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in 2011.